Power Line Beats the NY Times—Again

Remember two days ago when I advanced the outrageous proposition that greenhouse gas emissions will fall faster under President Trump than they would have under Madam President Hillary? Yes, I was partly trolling the climatistas, but there is a serious point that much climate policy posing is unserious, counter-productive, and beside the point.

With the election of Donald Trump, it certainly looked that way to many of the shellshocked diplomats gathered in Morocco earlier this month at the first climate summit following the breakthrough agreement in Paris last year to contain greenhouse gas emissions. . .

Don’t give up just yet . . . President Trump’s climate policy — or his lack of one — could work out in surprising ways.

Ted Nordhaus and Jessica Lovering, in a report published on Tuesday by the Breakthrough Institute, pointed out that real progress on reducing carbon in the atmosphere has been driven so far by specific domestic energy, industrial and innovation policies, “not emissions targets and timetables or international agreements intended to legally constrain national emissions.” . . .

As Robert Stavins of Harvard University put it, “The most important factor in terms of carbon emissions in the United States is the price of natural gas.” And for all the hand-wringing over the future of the Clean Power Plan, its demise might not even make that much of a difference. The shift from coal to gas will continue to happen anyway. . .

Most importantly, climate objectives could mesh with Mr. Trump’s goal of energy independence. According to the 2016 edition of the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook, the United States could pretty much become energy independent by 2040 — reducing its annual oil imports to 1 million barrels a day from 6 million in 2014 — as long as Washington sticks to current policies.

One implication is that we don’t need the “climate community.” This is one reason I spend less and less time keeping up with these losers. Heh.